[Freeciv-Dev] Re: historical background on nations/leaders Was: historical backgroundon wonders

[David Pfitzner <dwp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 16 Jul 2000, =?BIG5?B?vbKr7bXY?= <iquin@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> >I hacked out entries on the various wonders for the Helptexts. I hope this is
> >useful to the project!
> These text are sent across the net whenever a client connects.
> So, helptext has to be concise.

An idea I just had: background information like this would be better
off being client-side, rather than going in the ruleset files.  That 
way it can be more verbose without the above problem, and this would
also potentially allow easier flexibility for having graphics, mark-up,
etc in future.  (Also it avoids issue of duplication between similar 
ruleset files, although could also achieve that eg using includes.)  
The client could still match up the appropriate entries, eg, by 
matching untranslated strings, or tags or something, so the player 
would not see much different.

This would require a bit of implementation to do first up to add the
code infrastructure, before adding the data, but an initial "simple" 
approach should not be too hard.

A disadvantage of course is if a client doesn't have the right data,
eg, for modpacks etc, but for such background information that should 
not be too serious (eg, compared to descriptions of game effects etc, 
which are more important for the client to have correct).  This would
be similar to the current case for modpacks with graphics (which I 
think is ok, at least tolerable).

-- David